IFA 2007

It's early days, but Sharp's indecently thin LCD TV has undoubtedly been the talk of IFA 2007. Just 20mm in the screen section, and a mere 29mm at its thickest, the glass-encased Aquos weighs just 25kg and yet boasts an astonishing 100,000:1 contrast ratio. Little surprise that spontaneous gasps leaked from the audience on first seeing it.

Give Vincent a press event and a video camera and he's as happy as a pig in the proverbial, so we sat him down at Samsung's IFA 2007 Mobile event and watched him try to keep the camera steady as they paraded gadget after beautiful gadget in front of him.

While Sharp relied on a massively skinny TV to wow IFA 2007 audiences, Toshiba seem to be going to quiet route; they've launched a number of new memory products designed to eke the very best performance out of your laptop, digital camera or PMP. Fresh for your picking includes new 16GB and 32GB High-Density SDHC cards, an 8GB microSDHC card and new TransFlash-based USB memory in 1GB to 8GB capacities (with 32GB promised by the end of the year).

Should the IXUS range announced at IFA 2007 be a little too "consumer" for your tastes, then Canon may have the answer: they've also launched two new PowerShot models, the G9 and the A650 IS. Each has a 13.1-megapixel CCD, 6x optical zoom and optical image stabilization, together with a host of features and customizable settings.

Vincent spent some time playing with the latest TomTom GPS navigation units and was pleased to find out that a number of models are crossing the Atlantic and finding their way to North America. The range-topping GO 920 and the 3rd edition ONE will be available in September, with the former offering pre-installed maps of the US, Canada and Europe on its 4GB of internal memory.

Proving that you don't need to pass on features to be fashionable, Canon launched two new models in their perennially popular IXUS range at IFA 2007 today. The 960 IS and 860 IS both continue the design ethos that started way back with the original APS IXUS, only packing even more user-friendly features such as red-eye correction and, in the case of the 960 IS, a 12.1 megapixel CCD.

How big is your living room? I only ask, because Samsung has seemingly set its sights on filling it with as much TV as possible. With their new F9 range they've (for the moment, anyway) secured the title of "largest commercially available LCD with LED backlighting," with a screen size of either 52" or a behemoth 70", while the F8 range may only come in 40" or 46" but that's still plenty big.

If you're going to give up desk-space to a printer then it may as well earn its keep by being bloody gorgeous. I'd wager that's the design brief given to Samsung's computer peripherals team; how else could you explain the glossy, piano lacquer pair of laser printers, the monochrome ML-1630 and the multifunction SCX-4500.

Sharp really pulled out the stops at IFA 2007 with some TVs so thin they'd drive a supermodel to organ removal. Undoubtedly star of the show was a 20mm thick LCD Aquos prototype, encased in a sheet of glass, only 29mm at its thickest point and weighing a ridiculous 25kg. Despite the lack of depth it was in no way lacking in the specs department; a 100,000:1 contrast ratio saw to that.

If the latest 1080p DLP projector to join Samsung's range reminds me of anything, it's my great-uncle Gordon. Not because he had a Texas Instruments DLP chip complete with a 10,000:1 contrast ratio and 24fps film mode, but because after a traumatic end-of-the-war champagne accident he was left as a grumpy looking cyclops. Still, even the SP-A800B could bring a smile to his lips (well, what was left of them) thanks to such niceties as 1920x1080 resolution and 1000 ANSI Im brightness from the 300W bulb.